Lilith Remembers
by Miims
Summary: In which Lilith remembers a girl named Poplar and then quickly forgets. A look at a demon before she was a demon.


Lilith sits in her newly inhabited body and demands her due. Baby's blood is just so tasty after a possession- yum she thinks. The dental hygienist in her shudders, but Lilith pushes her into the darkest pits of her own mind, folds her in on herself and twists. She won't be hearing from her again.

Then she walks across the room to the only mirror in the woman's office. It has a dresser below it with more than a few cosmetics, the woman had many virtues, but her vanity was not one of them. However, it is something else that catches her, the demon Lilith's eye. It's the slant of the nose and the shape of the lips that bring back the flash.

In her minds eye, and from the reflection she often saw in murky river water she knows that they eyes were closer together, the brows thinner, the chin smaller and more pointed, but there is something. The woman she is thinking of was not particularly pretty compared to others, she wasn't much of anything special actually. But her husband loved her in his way and the men of his tribe were meant to, more than they were meant to if she were honest.

What had his name been? Lilith thinks for a moment and comes up blank, this bothers her, bothers for reasons she does not care to admit. So she moves away from the mirror and promises herself that when she discards the body for a new one she will disfigure this ones face.

Still the memories will not stop.

The woman was by no means special, she obeyed her husband and father, heeded her mothers advice and offered prayers to their nature deities when it was required. She maintained their belongings when her husband left to hunt. She packed their goods when they had to move.

Lilith remembers the woman pushing a strand of pale hair behind her ears before entering the tent of the old wise woman and begging-demanding for children. There was nothing more dreadful than being barren, in a women.

Still Poplar, that is her name- after the tree, holds onto hope. Her husband- her husband still holds onto her after making love, brushing her hair with his callused hands and whispering in it. He loves- loved- her hair.

In moments like these she would cry and repeat his name over and over "Flint flint flint Flint flint". In moments like these she would gaze into her husbands eyes. She had thought he was the most handsome thing in the world, though her brother the Seal told her she was fooling herself. Still she loved to run her fingers through his own blond-tinted-red hair and tracing her fingers over his long nose and high brow. That was when they were young and it could not last forever.

For a wife without children was bound to be replaced.

When it happened, it was not all bad. Flint still lover her and made his way to her tent many evenings, and they all three slept together when it was too cold for any one to survive on their own. And soon during the winter nights the three became four, and Poplar found herself an accessory in her own house. Jealousy, it was not an easy thing for her to feel. Her husband loved her, but he loved his new wife and children too.

So she goes to the medicine woman and begs, but nothing can be done. So she goes to her gods and begs some more. Get on her hands and knees, but they do not answer. So she resigns herself to her fate. If anybody notices the difference in her, they say nothing.

It was a few years later, she knows this because she begins to feel older, that the stranger came home in her husbands body. She did not notice immediately. She was teaching her surrogate daughter how to cook with hot rocks on a fire when he entered. She ushered him to his spot as she is meant, and motions for the girl to serve her father.

It is different this night though, she is the only wife in the house, and he grabs her arm. He does not act this way often and asks what she has done and what she can do. Then she looks into his eyes and shocked by how cold they are. Abruptly he lets go.

"Nothing wife" he says, and that was the end of that.

That night he comes to her, the stranger in her husband's body. They have sex, he on top, and it hurts. It is like he is experimenting with her, and it hurts- it hurts. When it is done she freezes and prays her leaves, but he doesn't, he commands her to sleep. So she falls into an uneasy one and has horrible dreams.

In her sleep she can no longer see the face of the one besides her, he is too bright. But he plays with her. He passes his hand through her abdomen and pulls hard. But she dismisses that. Nothing she knows of can do that- has that sort of power. When she wakes up her husband is back in his place and she almost weeps to feel his arms around her, for she knows it is his touch.

She pulls herself out of their shared furs and goes to make breakfast. And that is the last of her not-husband she sees in a while. But something does happen. Her monthly flows stop and after the second month she visits the wise woman who declares a miracle.

Her husband is ecstatic when he founds out. The second wife, less so, but it is still a new child, and they make way for her. Her, because Poplar is sure that is when it is. Her husband already has two boys, he needs another daughter.

So her belly swells and she smiles and grows more and more beautiful by the minute. To her husband she outshines the world. But it is not to last. The stranger comes back, not as her husband, but as the forest itself. When she hears to voice at first she does not know what to do, so she goes to her knees.

It does not help, all she can feel is his hatred. His anger, his hate, his unexplainable fury. She can feel his spindly fingers digging into the skin on her face, inching nears her eyes so she screams. To no avail, he catches the sound and shoves it back down her throat, and it burns on the way down.

Now he is screaming, about his brothers and unforeseen consequences, about his father and about humanity. She tires to use his anger against him and get away. It does not work, he catches her before she can stand and shoves his fingers into her abdomen, into her womb, and he pulls. She screams again, this times with her own sorrow and fury, but it is too late. Her womb's blood is running down her legs, her child is dying, she is dying.

Somebody finds her though, but it is –was too late. It was too late the moment he found her with his child. The girl dies and she weeps and rips her hair and does not leave her tent or the smell of death. Lilith remembers this. That hatred, it was impossible to forget, especially because it was her own.

He is back though, in the dark corners of her mind and he is cold. In her sleep she curls in on herself and does not talk. When she is awake she screams and her husband looks down at her sadly. She has gone mad he thinks, and she has, just for different reasons than he knows.

Because in her mind he is there, making her relive her child's life and death over and over again. When that is done he twists her mind. Then slowly slowly he moves to her soul. He rakes and he twists and he uses his power and his false brightness and he destroys her. Then he rebuilds her, a forsaken mockery of what she had been. Her body dies, her husband and brothers mourn, as does her surrogate daughter.

But that does not matter, because her not-soul lives on, and her not-soul loves this man-thing as a father. This amuses him, especially because he still hates her.

Then his whispers her new name. One without any hard consonants and guttural vowels, an oily name that snaked off the tonged.

"Lilith, that is your name now- Lilith"

Poplar is dead, Poplar is forgotten.

Momentarily the demon Lilith is livid, she wants to destroy her _father_, but then her mind is soothed, placated, then she forgets it all again.

AN: I don't know anything about prehistoric hunter gatherer tribes in northern Europe, I made all that up. I also do not own Supernatural.

My reason for writing this is because I do not like the concept of demons in this story. Neither do I like Lilith, but then I started thinking. Lilith didn't really have a choice. Lucifer, in the Supernatural world twisted her soul. She had no choice in the matter- that really sucks. She was probably a normal women and for whatever reason she was chosen to be the first demon. I still don't like her character, but I do pity her.

This is my attempt to figure that out.

Please please please REVIEW!


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